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Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 25, 2012

As the summer approaches, firefly-themed events light up Osaka

At the start of the month, Tokyo's Sumida River was filled with thousands of LED lights to create the illusion of fireflies. Nature lovers in Osaka hope you'll want the real thing.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 20, 2012

Time-travelling reporters; celebrity genes; CM of the week: Schick

As if there wasn't enough news to cover now, NHK has started sending reporters back in time on the variety show "Time Scoop Hunter" (NHK-G, Tues., 10:55 p.m.). Journalists use "warp technology" to travel to different eras to collect information about how people really lived in the past.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / WEEK 3
May 20, 2012

Artist creates Yokohama bodhisattvas

Eleven bodhisattvas stand in formation, their heads crowned and their almond-shaped eyes and faces dusted with gold.
CULTURE / Books
May 20, 2012

A tour de Japan

Japan on Foot, by Mary King.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 12, 2012

Filmmaker savors being in situation where threat of the unknown looms

A surfboard mounted against a sea of sludge, whimsically defiant to the ruinous tide of debris. It's the kind of quirky beauty you might expect from Michael Arias, an American filmmaker based in Tokyo. Arias' creative work, in film through to his recent photographs of Tohoku, all paint with the same...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 11, 2012

Filmmaker says don't worry, be happy

"Wow, the weather turned bad quickly, huh?"
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
May 8, 2012

Issey Miyake's innovations beat the Brits to win the Design Museum of London fashion award

Colloquially called "The Oscars of Design," the Design Museum of London Design Awards are prestigious accolades given in six categories to the most innovative and inspiring designs of the year — and this year's top honors in the fashion category went to Japan's own Issey Miyake and his team of boundary-pushing...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 6, 2012

A postcard from Kauai's 'South Pacific' paradise

Those who know me know I tend to pick up and go quite easily, as the travel bug has never loosened its hold. This time, I've made the ultimate getaway to paradise to escape my regular routine of work and college. I'm talking about Kauai, Hawaii.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
May 5, 2012

Observatory fills small Gifu town with pride

An official opening ceremony Sunday was held to celebrate the completion of a small astronomical observatory on the grounds of Tara Elementary School in Kamiishizu, Gifu Prefecture.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 5, 2012

English fluency and alligator pits

When I used to teach English at university, I was sure to leave an impression on my students on their first day of class. I'd tell them that as Japanese speakers, they could only speak with a mere 130 million people. But if they could learn English, they would be able to communicate with 500 million...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 5, 2012

The word of words

Sometimes students will ask me, "What's your favorite Japanese word?"
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
May 1, 2012

Blood, beatings and the cage: the bouncer

Before The Japan Times was invited inside Nagoya's iD Cafe to speak to Thomas, the nightclub's security manager, we stopped to chat to a uniformed policeman near the club. He told us there were as many as 50 fights in a nearby park on Friday and Saturday nights. This busy area of the city, Sakae, known...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 30, 2012

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the sakura

Until The New York Times pointed it out earlier this month, I had failed to notice, alas, that Tokyo had given cherry trees to this city as it did to Washington, D.C., 100 years ago ("Gifts From Japan, Less Celebrated in Manhattan," April 12).
CULTURE / Books
Apr 29, 2012

Portraits and memories of those who survived the horrors of war

FROM ABOVE, by Paule Saviano. Contents Factory, 2011, 256 p.p., ¥8,000 (hardcover) The twentieth century had, among other things, the dubious distinction of being one of the bloodiest, deadliest times in world history. Wars, genocide, mass murders, etc, aided by the best technology available at the...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 29, 2012

Erika Sawajiri is an "Evil Woman"; controversial DaVinci paintings; CM of the week: Lotte Ghana

She's back, and badder than ever! Actually, before her monumental fall from grace, actress Erika Sawajiri rose to fame on her innocent image and ability to weep on cue. But after dissing her own film at a press conference she became poison.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 22, 2012

Matsumoto in May means 'crafts '

England gave the world the Windsor chair, but it was the city of Matsumoto in central Nagano Prefecture that reinvented it for Japan.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Apr 22, 2012

It takes a forest, a field and a stream to raise a child

In 1996, back when the present U.S. Secretary of State was the first lady, Hillary Rodham-Clinton published a book titled "It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us," which popularized an old African proverb — "It takes a village to raise a child."
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 21, 2012

Drogba theatrics taint impressive Chelsea first-leg win

He is built like a heavyweight boxer but has the pain threshold of a child. Didier Drogba stands 190 cm but unfortunately his impressive frame spends too much time on the ground. There isn't an ounce of fat on his muscular body, yet the slightest touch can bring a reaction as if he has been hit by a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 20, 2012

Actress Mizukawa tackles 'violent, turbulent' character

Despite being holed up in a Tokyo hotel room for a press junket, 28-year-old actress Asami Mizukawa is surprisingly upbeat. However, she gives an unusual response when asked about the new TV mini-series she is starring in.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 20, 2012

'Le Havre'

Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki has always been free from a particular pressure of the modern world: the pressure to grow and change. You know, the one where we have to make more money, be better looking and forever fit, and go on better vacations than the Joneses (or Suzukis) and post the pictures...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 20, 2012

'Bridesmaids'

The word out on "Bridesmaids" is that it's a successful port of the Judd Apatow-style bromantic comedy to the chick-flick platform. That's partly true: The coarse humor, the emphasis on how people act when members of the opposite sex aren't around and the emotional honesty that's lurking behind all the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 15, 2012

Wild Watch turns 30 this month

As April 2nd's 30th anniversary of my first Wild Watch column in The Japan Times neared, I was in India — teeming Delhi to be precise, with its cacophony of people, honking traffic and barking dogs, though a tailorbird would stop and call outside my window, where a palm squirrel never tired of chattering....
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2012

"Beauty of Combination From Japanese-style Painting"

Traditional Japanese paintings were often created in pairs, and though such works would be individually striking, their visual effect is even more powerful when they are viewed together. For example, Chikudo Kishi's two "Views of Hozukyo" offer a vast panoramic view of the fiercely torrential Hozu river...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2012

"Beauty of Combination From Japanese-style Painting"

Traditional Japanese paintings were often created in pairs, and though such works would be individually striking, their visual effect is even more powerful when they are viewed together. For example, Chikudo Kishi's two "Views of Hozukyo" offer a vast panoramic view of the fiercely torrential Hozu river...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Apr 12, 2012

Tokyo Times

When not working as a high school English teacher, photoblogger Lee Chapman walks the streets of Tokyo in search of stories and sights that tourists, and even long-term residents, seldom see. Chapman, a U.K. native, has been running the photoblog Tokyo Times for almost 10 years. While his posts do sometimes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Apr 11, 2012

Toilet with a view opens in Chiba

If you gotta go, might as well go with a view. Seriously, we're not taking the piss, or anything.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Apr 8, 2012

Keene shares his love for Tohoku

Donald Keene, one of the world's most renowned scholars of Japanese literature, said during an event held in Tokyo on March 20 that he believes that Japan's northeast will recover from the Great East Japan Earthquake and be reborn as a beautiful region.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 6, 2012

'Kotoko'

"Tetsuo (Tetsuo: The Iron Man)," the 1989 film that made Shinya Tsukamoto internationally famous, was the cinematic equivalent of a jackhammer to the brain: harsh, loud, violent and unrelenting. But this cyberpunk fantasy about a salaryman transforming into a metal monster was also strangely hypnotic...
Reader Mail
Apr 5, 2012

Ill effects on bilateral relations

Klaus Herrle, in his March 29 letter, "Painful to see payoffs to U.S.," gets straight to the point of criticizing Washington's demand that Japan pay an additional $1 billion for transferring U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam and elsewhere.

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?